Exchange Congress coming back to
address racial diversity in Oak Park

By ERIC LINDEN

Reaching back in its history, official Oak Park this year is planning on
reviving the Oak Park Exchange Congress to foster discussion of racial
diversity in the village and in surrounding suburbs--including Forest
Park, whose mayor attended an Exchange Congress planning meeting on
Monday.

First held in 1976 but not since 1992, the Exchange Congress brought
together various majority-white communities like Oak Park who had
experienced an increase in black residents and who had taken various
actions or at least held discussion on the matter. During the Oak
Park-founded Exchange Congress, the communities would gather, in the
past, for two or three days of meetings, panel discussions and other
forums to trade information and to exchange programs that had been
enacted in the racial realm. Oak Park began the occasional meetings
after it began programs to avoid wholesale change from a predominantly
white to predominantly black community.

Some aspects of Oak Park's dialogue on racial matters may have changed
in nearly a quarter-century since the Exchange Congress began, but the
goal this year apparently remains the same as the new regional effort is
being planned.

"Not only is this a good thing to do," Oak Park resident and current
Exchange Congress co-chair Barry Greenwald said of the so-called managed
integration programs pioneered by Oak Park, "but it's getting harder to
do."

Planners of the new Exchange Congress met on April 24 at village hall
and decided to hold the event on Sept. 21 this year with the theme of
"Enhancing change, the vision of diversity moves forward." The event and
the planning are being co-chaired by Oak Park residents Greenwald, who
is white, and Gloria Smith, who is black.

Rather than the involvement of communities throughout the country as in
most prior years, this year's Exchange Congress will be regional and
will involve a hoped-for 25 Chicago-area suburbs. Among those attending
Monday's planning meeting were Barbara Moore of the Human Relations
Department of the Park Forest village government in the south suburbs;
David A. Janke, who does public relations for the village government of
south suburban South Holland; and Anthony Calderone, the mayor of Forest
Park, which is adjacent to Oak Park on the west. Calderone, who was
elected to office last year, responded to an invitation from Oak Park
Village President Barbara Furlong to attend the planning meeting.
Officials from River Forest were invited but did not attend. Other
planners involved Monday are Oak Park residents.

The dates have been set to have an opening reception the evening of
Wednesday, Sept. 20, and the formal discussion sessions during "a solid
full day" on Thursday, Sept. 21, said steering committee member John
Lukehart, a vice president with the Chicago fair housing group the
Leadership Council for Metropolitan Open Communities. Exchange Congress
planners have set a goal of getting 140 to 150 people to attend the
working sessions, and much planning remains to be done. Neither specific
agendas nor a location have been settled. Committees of the steering
committee are to report back on May 22 to decide on those details, among
others.

Among the sites under consideration are Oak Park and River Forest High
School, 201 N. Scoville Ave. in Oak Park; Oak Park village hall, Lombard
Avenue and Madison Street; Dominican University, 7900 W. Division St.,
and Concordia University, 7300 W. Division St., both in River Forest;
and, in a suggestion made by Mayor Calderone, the Living World Christian
Center, which has a majority-black congregation in Forest Park.

The church in the former Forest Park Mall at 7600 W. Roosevelt Road
recently completed most of a $15 million renovation of meeting spaces in
the former mall, Calderone said, and has ample space to host the Oak
Park Exchange Congress. "And there's plenty of parking, too," Calderone
said.

Also on May 22, reports are to be given with the goal of finalizing
activities on the pre-congress reception and on the congress' agenda for
Sept. 21. The day would begin with registration at 8 a.m., followed by a
keynote speech at 9:15 a.m., panel discussions in the morning before a
12:10 p.m. lunch and afternoon sessions until 4:45 p.m. Lukehart, who
chairs the steering group's program committee, said the following topics
for discussion are "pretty much in draft form."

** A keynote speech on the current status of what a committee report
termed the "segregation/diversity" in the region would be given and
followed by a series of panel discussions.

** A panel of government, religious and school officials would address
needed community leadership to address racial diversity. All delegates
would attend.

** Delegates would split up to attend one of three sessions on schools,
dealing
with student achievement, multi-culturalism in education, curriculum and
staffing; and racial composition in the schools as it relates to the
overall community. "There's a lot to talk about with respect to
schools," Lukehart said.

** Similarly, three concurrent sessions would be held on housing, real
estate practices, affirmative marketing, preserving and maintaining
housing stock and marketing. There may be discussion, organizers said,
about legal issues and rulings that have impacted or could impact racial
diversity efforts.

** Subsequent sessions also would address community attitudes, economic
development, public safety and policing, the media, the role of the arts
in diversity and youth. "We're keen," Lukehart said, "on having an
all-delegate session on youth." Plans, he said, call from exploring and
hearing the attitudes of young people and also hearing from adults who
can tell their experiences of growing up as teens in a multi-racial Oak
Park.

"We want to show the communities in the region," said Greenwald, "how a
community works to maintain diversity (and how) it can add value to a
community, too. And it's also about accepting the responsibility that
(diversity) just doesn't happen.

"We invite everyone to attend and participate (and we hope) to have as
dynamic a project as possible."

As in years past, residents of Oak Park, River Forest and Forest Park,
plus other communities in the region, would be invited to attend the
Exchange Congress and to offer their opinions about the topics to be
discussed. Tentative plans call for a fee in the $125 range, which
covers organizational costs and meals and refreshments and does not
include fees for speakers, who will appear free of charge.

Officials Monday said a "save the date" mailing is to go out soon to
communities about the Exchange Congress, with instructions to contact
co-chairs Greenwald and Smith with questions. Oak Park President Furlong
said formal publicity will be issued shortly and be put out both by a
new public relations staff person to start working at village hall on
May 1 and by Jasculca-Terman & Associates, the Chicago firm with Oak
Park and River Forest ties that village government retains to perform
special publicity and public planning tasks.

Sherlynn Reid, a founder of the original Exchange Congress, with Smith
one of the two black Oak Park residents on the current Exchange Congress
steering committee and the recently retired director of the village
government's Community Relations Department, said similar regional
meetings will be going on this year in the Cleveland, Ohio area and in
the New York-Philadelphia-New Jersey region. The planners' goal would to
combine this year's regional efforts and to revive a national Exchange
Congress gathering in the year 2001.

While Lukehart chairs the program committee, Reid chairs the Exchange
Congress' finance committee. Oak Park village government has allocated
$100 in seed money to plan the congress and also a consultant fee to be
paid to Reid. Plus, $1,000 remains in the Exchange Congress' account
from previous years, and private donations will be sought to pay for the
congress in Oak Park later this year.